With the end of the year comes a close to yet another excellent chapter in cinema. From intimate character studies to thrilling genre pieces, the year’s best movies captured our imaginations, sparked conversations, and reminded us of the magic of the big screen. Here are ComingSoon critic Jonathan Sim’s top 10 movies of 2024 that made it an unforgettable year for movie lovers everywhere.
10. Day of the Fight
Jack Huston’s directorial debut manages to pack the emotional punch. Day of the Fight is a beautifully crafted independent film that feels like an homage to character-driven classics like Rocky and Raging Bull. I saw this film at a screening where Martin Scorsese introduced the film and its cast, and it is phenomenal.
This is an emotionally resonant film all set in one day. Michael Pitt stars as a boxer getting ready for the fight of his career after an accident years prior sent him to prison. Tender and beautifully performed with Steve Buscemi, Ron Perlman, and Joe Pesci rounding out the supporting cast, Day of the Fight is a love letter to a bygone era of filmmaking as we follow a man and his relationships with everyone he’s ever cared about, which makes
9. Her Story (好东西)
Her Story has been described by many as China’s take on Barbie, another film that deals with contemporary feminist themes in a commercial fashion. Writer/director Shao Yihui creates a warm hug of a movie that manages to be absolutely hilarious. Her dialogue is witty and on point as she crafts a hysterical, touching movie with a few storylines, but mainly follows a relationship between a single mother and a younger woman navigating life in all of its unpredictabilities.
There is an ingenious sequence that depicts the sounds of motherhood, which is one of my favorite movie moments of the whole year.
8. Ghostlight
From directors Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson comes a magnificent indie drama that pulls you into its world with the characters. This film takes a risk by introducing a family filled with erratic, emotional people. It’s hard to like them at first, but as the film progresses, we are slowly clued into why they behave this way. As we learn of the tragedy that has torn their family apart, I hung onto every word.
It’s a touching tale about how art can heal people, as this father finds himself putting all of his sorrow into a local production of Romeo & Juliet. I had no idea while watching this that the family in this film is a family of actors in real life, but that makes so much sense in retrospect. Their chemistry is so natural, and Keith Kupferer (who you may remember as the guy who yelled, “He should turn himself in!” in The Dark Knight) delivers a masterful performance, delivering scenes where his character does not know how to act, and then learns to over time.
7. September 5
A white-knuckled exploration of journalistic ethics, September 5 is a masterful thriller. All set in a dim broadcasting facility, this movie offers an incredible perspective on a dark event in history. It follows the Munich massacre at the 1972 Olympics, but rather than providing an objective point of view, we see everything through the ABC Sports Team, who needed to shift gears from covering live sports to a live terrorist attack.
Director Tim Fehlbaum and his team performed extensive research to get this film to be as accurate as possible, perfectly combining scripted scenes with archival footage. It’s a devastating experience that sticks with you after you watch it, making your palms sweat as you wonder what will happen next.
6. The Wild Robot
One of the most powerful movies of the year, The Wild Robot is a love letter to parenting told through a sci-fi animation lens. Writer/director Chris Sanders has delivered another fantastic, gorgeously animated film that often looks and feels like a painting in a child’s picture book. It’s stunning from start to finish, as Lupita Nyong’o portrays ROZ, a robot who adopts a gosling and helps unite a community of animals.
Like many of the films on this list, this movie is a tearjerker that works on every emotional level, knowing what to do with its characters to bring out the laughs and the feels.
5. Young Woman and the Sea
A remarkable true story told in powerful fashion, Daisy Ridley stars in Young Woman and the Sea, a movie about a swimmer determined to swim across the English Channel. This is an awe-inspiring tale of overcoming adversity and fighting to be seen in a world that didn’t take female athletes seriously at the time.
Ridley, who also starred in my honorable mention Magpie, proves herself to be a force to be reckoned with far beyond her Star Wars fame, getting you to love and care for this character in an underdog sports story that can resonate with anyone. Director Joachim Rønning outdoes himself here.
4. Anora
Sean Baker’s most mainstream movie yet is also perhaps his finest: a delightfully chaotic movie starring Mikey Madison in a performance so fantastic that it should make her a movie star. It captures the thrills of a whirlwind romance between sex worker Ani and wealthy Vanya that takes a turn when his family tries to annul the marriage.
It’s insane, energetic, and hysterical. The supporting cast fully commits in a film that allows every moment to feel organic even when we’re seeing over-the-top events happen. But it quiets down in the last few minutes, giving you an ending that never quite leaves you.
3. Juror #2
Juror #2 is the type of film that would have been a box office hit if it were released in the 1990s. Directed by 94-year-old Hollywood veteran Clint Eastwood, this gripping courtroom drama feels like the perfect marriage of 12 Angry Men and A Few Good Men. A man selected for jury duty realizes he is responsible for the murder in his trial; a premise like that should be selling out stadiums.
Jonathan Abrams’s brilliant screenplay will keep you guessing what will happen next. Nicholas Hoult continues a long string of fantastic performances this year, and he excels as a man who needs to protect himself and his family but cannot bear to send an innocent man to prison for his own crime. Gripping and powerfully performed, this movie is now streaming on Max for anyone who wants a good old-fashioned courtroom drama.
2. White Bird
In 2017, Lionsgate released a film called Wonder, which had a $20 million production budget and earned $315 million at the box office. This box office smash hit starring Jacob Tremblay as a young boy with a rare facial deformity spawned a spin-off/prequel this year. Yet, whenever I bring up this phenomenal film (which I actually loved more than Wonder) to anyone, they have not heard of it.
White Bird: A Wonder Story has only grossed $8.5 million, less than 3% of its predecessor, which is an absolute shame. This film sees the bully of the first film, Julian (Bryce Gheisar), hearing a story from his grandmother (played by Helen Mirren) about her youth as a Jewish girl escaping capture in World War II. It’s about how one act of kindness changed her life. Ariella Glaser delivers a fantastic performance in a beautifully made movie from Marc Forster.
There is a sequence where a young boy and girl sit in a car and pretend to drive it. Forster and cinematographer Matthias Koenigswieser manage to make a scene that could be simple on the page breathtaking. Writer Mark Bomback adapts the graphic novel beautifully, and makes this movie a must-watch. A gut-wrenching war drama manages to be a powerful ode to the eternal importance of kindness in a cruel world.
1. The Substance
Rarely do we get a film that completely commits and overdelivers to its insane premise. The Substance, from writer/director Coralie Fargeat, is mind-blowing. There is no movie that manages to combine style and, well, SUBSTANCE better than this film. It stars Demi Moore as a past-her-prime actress who undergoes an experimental procedure to create a younger, sexier version of herself, played by Margaret Qualley, but it asks what happens when the procedure is misused.
It’s a satirical, jaw-dropping body horror film that will have you struggling to look at the screen. The performances are phenomenal, and every bit of this movie reaches its full potential. No other movie from 2024 has reached the pure deranged nature of this film, making this the movie event of the year.
Honorable Mentions: Will & Harper, Dune Part Two, Carry-On, Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, Memoir of a Snail, A Real Pain, Look Back, Kill, Magpie, Hijack 1971.
